Table Of ContentDISCOURSE AND
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour
Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell
@Sage Publications
London. Newbury Park. Beverly Hills. New Delhi
© 1987 Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell
First Published 1987
All rights reserved. No pan of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Potter, Jonathan
Discourse and social psychology : beyond
attitudes and behaviour.
1, Oral communication — Social aspects
I. Title II. Wetherell. Margaret
302.2’24 P95
Library oT Congress Catalogue Card Number 87-060198
vISBN 0-8039-8055-8
ISBN 0-8039-8056-6 Pbk
Phototypeset by System 4 Associates, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire
Printed in Great Britain by J, W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Bristol
Contents
Introduction 1
Three illustrative examples 2
Definitions of discourse analysis 6
1. Foundations of discourse analysis 9
Chomsky and psychology 9
Words as deeds: speech act theory’ 14
'Doing' talking: ethnomethodology 18
Signs' of structure: semiology 24
Social study of language 28
Problems and limitations 29
21' Unfolding discourse analysis 32
,■ Some major components of discourse analysis 32
Variable discourse and traditional social psychology 36
Tim suppression of account variability' 39
Attitudes in discourse 43
Beyond attitudes 53
3. Making rules work 56
The etho genic perspective 56
Problems with ethogenics 61
Discourse analysis and the study of scientists' rules 64
Testability’, soccer violence and the analysis of rules 71
4. Accounts in sequence 74
Accounts and social psychology 74
Conversation analysis and accounts 80
Accounts in court 87
Discourse and accounts 93
-5. Speaking subjects 95
' r ‘ Traditional images of the self 95
Towards a new conception of the subject 101
The ideological self 108
Discourse analysis at work on the self ! 10
<6?! Categories in discourse 116
Social psychology and social categories 1 17
Problems with traditional categorization research 120
Prototypes and variability 122
Motives and membership categories 126
Categories, content and community 132
Categories and the construction of discourse 136
7. From representations to repertoires 138
The theory of social representations 139
Problems with social representations 142
interpretative repertoires 146
Language, representation and repertoire 155
8. How to analyse discourse 158
Philosophy, sociology and methodology 158
Ten stages in the analysis of discourse 160
Conclusions 175
9. Controversial topics and future directions 177
Discourse and lite world ‘under the skull' 177
Discourse and die world 'out there’ 180
Discourse and reflexivity 182
The development of discourse analysis 184
Appendix: transcription notation 188
References 190
Index 205
About the authors
Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell are both Lecturers in Psychology
at the University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland KY16 9JU. They are the
authors (with Peter Stringer) of Social Texts and Context: Literature and
Social Psychology (1984) and many scholarly articles.
Acknowledgements
As with any work of this kind many people have contributed directly
or indirectly to the final product. We would particularly like to thank
those people who have read and commented on versions of chapters:
Dominic Abrams, Charles Abraham, Mick Billig, Paul Drew, Nick Emler,
Nigel Gilbert, Quentin Halliday, Dennis Hilton, Ruth McFadyen, Andy
McKinlay, Mike Mulkay, David Myers, Gun Semin, Heather Smith and
Rod Watson.
We have also benefited from an Economic and Social Science Research
Council Grant, which enabled us to conduct some of the interviews which
are discussed in the book, Bridget Rothwell retyped chapters and Diane
Millar the references. Farrell Burnett at Sage has made many helpful
suggestions about the content and organization of the work.
We are grateful to Academic Press for permission to reproduce a table
from G. Semin and A. Manstead (1982) The Acconniability of Condttci,
London: Academic Press; to Paul Drew for permission to reproduce
data extracts from J. M. Atkinson and P, Drew (1979) Order in Conn:
The Organization of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings, London:
Macmillan/SSRC; and to Cambridge University Press for permission
to reproduce data extracts from G. N. Gilbert and M. Mulkay (1984)
Opening Pandora ‘s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Introduction
This book is about language and its importance for social psychology.
It looks at the subtle ways in which language orders our perceptions and
makes things happen and thus shows how language can be used to construct
and create social interaction and diverse social worlds.
We will be concerned with social texts of all kinds; that is, the conversa
tions, newspaper stories, novels and soap operas which are a central and
inescapable part of everyday life. Indeed, the term ‘text’ will be used in
a broad sense, to include not only writing prima facie but also the written
record of the spoken; the transcript of an interview will be as much pur
concern as the prepared narrative.
We had three main goals in writing this book. First, to illustrate the
breadth of understanding which has emerged from research on social texts
in the last few years. We deliberately chose to discuss examples of work
which asks different sorts of questions of highly varied types of discourse.
Second, we hoped the book could serve as a resource for those interested
in doing their own research on social texts. To this end, we have tried
to provide a full description of certain studies rather than a completely
comprehensive, but more superficial, coverage of the entire area. In
addition, Chapter Eight is devoted entirely to the analytic issues which
arise in this kind of work. Third, we hoped to demonstrate how some
of the most fundamental theoretical notions in traditional and more radical
social psychology can be illuminated by an analysis of discourse. In fact,
we will suggest that the failure to accommodate to discourse damages their
theoretical and empirical adequacy. Overall, we hope that this work might
encourage others to recognize the importance and interest of analysing
social texts.
The book is organized as follows. In the first chapter, the theoretical
roots of discourse analysis in linguistic philosophy, ethnomethodology and
semiotics arc described. In Chapter Two we overview the perspective of
discourse analysis, and illustrate its utility with respect to the social
psychological notion of attitudes. Then follow five substantive chapters
which deal in turn with the theoretical concepts of rules, accounts, the
self, categories and social representations. Chapter Eight then describes
the practical stages through which research on social texts progresses, and
discusses the issue of validity. Finally, Chapter Nine tackles some broader
issues and identifies future research directions.
Before we begin, however, there are two things we want to do. We
would like to discuss three simple examples of discourse to illustrate some
of the phenomena with which we will be concerned throughout (he book.
2 Discourse and social psychology
This should give a preliminary sketch of what we mean when we say social
texts play a constructive role in our social lives. Then we will give a brief
account of our rationale for the research included in the book, and describe
some of the potentially confusing terminological issues which bedevil this
area.
Three illustrative examples
Example one
The first example is a reflexive one in the sense that it is an instance of
the kind of text social scientists themselves might write. This passage of
discourse could, in fact, have stood perfectly sensibly as the first paragraph
of this book.
In the last fifteen years :i revolution has taken place in social psychology. This
revolution, sometimes known as die ‘Crisis in Social Psychology’ (Elms, 1975),
was the consequence of deep dissatisfaction with die state of research and theory.
Works like Harre and Secord (1972), Israel and Tajfel (1972), Gergen, (1973)
and McGuire (1973) asked fundamental questions about the nature of the
discipline and, in particular, about its strongly positivistic reliance on experi
ments as the main research method. In the aftermath of this radical reassessment
there is now a need to develop systematic methods of analysis which... (from
an earlier draft of this book)
When reading research papers, reviews and books we are constantly faced
with writing of this kind which we recognize as providing a helpful
introductory orientation or context for the reader. But we could also view
this piece from a very different perspective, focusing on its nature as a
social text, and analysing howJt constructs a-specific, reality'.
The first thing to note is that this passage is itself an enormously
ambitious piece of social psychology, identifying social categories (social
psychologist), states of belief shared by the members of the category
(deep dissatisfaction), causal processes (dissatisfaction leading to change)
and events (revolution). This ambitiousness is hidden, partly by the
apparent simplicity of the description and partly by its conventional
and familiar nature. But there is a great deal going on even in a short
text such as this.
The category ‘social psychology’ is far from straightforward? It could
refer to a set of ideas, a body of writings in journals, textbooks and so
on. or to a group of people. Referring to social psychology is not quite
like referring to doughnuts in the bun shop, as in ‘I’ll have that one with
the extra jam’. The state of belief is equally difficult. How is the claim
Introduction 3
that there was general and deep dissatisfaction in social psychology in the
early 1970s to be checked? It is most unclear what a ‘deep’ dissatisfaction
is. Perhaps the dissatisfaction must have been deep because it led to revolu
tion - but this is just circular. The idea of revolution itself fits in well, of
course, because it follows on from the notion of deep dissatisfaction.
The point is, then, that even in an apparently simple passage the idea
of plain reference to pre-existing entities does not do justice to the.,
complexity of the material. From the many possible ways of character-
izing the relevant group of people, sets of be[ieTs7~and processes this j'i
particular one was chosen.'"During the course of this book’_we"~will U;
repeatedly point out the ever-present possibility of alternative descriptions-A ’
and categorizations.
k A description of this kind involves a whole set of choices, and these
Choices may have many consequences. Take the use of the term ‘positiv
istic’. There is a lot of debate about what precisely should be counted as
positivist research - is it confined to the idea that science progresses
through the accumulation of facts, or does it include all research which
involves the conversion of data into numbers? At the present moment there
is much more agreement that being ‘positivistic’ is a bad thing. It is a
term which comes ready packaged with its evaluation. Another theme
which will regularly recur in this book is the close interdependence of
descriptive and evaluative language.
We can also look at how the passage is organized as an effective
introduction. It offers a narrative of the development of the discipline so
that our present project (writing a book on the analysis of discourse)
becomes both a proper and important thing to do. In this sense it serves
as an initial justification of our activity. Again, we will see that justification
of various kinds is a very general feature of accounts given in a wide range
of situations, and one which, on the whole, psychologists have been rather
slow to pick up on.
These phenomena are not, of course, unique to scientific texts. Far from
it. Texts are not part of some natural process like a chemical reaction or
electrons moving around a circuit. They are complex cultural and psycho
logical products, constructed in particular ways to make things happen.^
In the course of this book wc will argue that any social text can become ;
the object of research. Even our own writing should not be immune from ;
this kind of examination. ;
Example two
The following passage comes from a conversation where Ruth is discussing
an acquaintance who is supposedly mentally ill (transcription symbols are
explained in the Appendix).
4 Discourse and social psychology
Ruhr. He was a racing driver and [] he had one particular special car which
he’d never iet anybody else go in. But he used to take my mum out for drives
in it, and, you know, everybody felt that that was alright and everything.
Looking back on it they decided, my grandmother decided, that she should
have realized that there was something odd about it. Because [] he wouldn't
let anybody else near that car. And my mother was very very naive about
everything at that stage. | ] And he suddenly said to her in the kitchen one day:
’I think we’ll have to slop meeting like this’. And she had no idea what he
was talking about. It just completely baffled her. And then he started writing
really strange, long, long, rambling letters - very abusive letters - to my
grandfamily, who realized [J that something must be up. (Mi trans 4:1)
Just as with Example One, there is nothing peculiar or nonsensical about
this section of discourse. As readers we do not have any difficulty in
reading It as a literal description of someone who is starting to ‘go mad’.
Yet there is a lot more to notice about it. One of the interesting things
about this account is that it is an account of an account. Accounts of
accounts are a chronic feature of ordinary life: we read a story in a
newspaper and then describe it to friends, or we gossip to Kevin about
what Carol told us about Jane and Steve. Accounts are often versions of
versions. The present one is Ruth’s version of events; but it is not a first
hand version, it is based on her grandmother’s version of what went on.
And it is clear that even the grandmother’s version is not first hand; her
account of what occurred in the kitchen is presumably based on the
mother’s statement.
Another interesting feature of this piece of talk is its status as a descrip
tion. In fact it is part of a much longer response to the question ‘have
you ever known anyone who you thought might be mentally ill?’ Three
features of the man’s behaviour are singled out for comment: taking the
mother for drives, the episode in the kitchen and the letters. Part of what
makes these features evidence of mental illness is their inappropriate or
unusual nature. The listener is not provided with a rational story to integrate
them together and so they function effectively in an anecdote about mental
illness. However, there are many ways to read texts and it is possible to
look for other plots or patterns which might fit.
This account could be seen as a classic story of a love affair where the
parents disapprove. There is nothing odd, let alone mad, about taking your
loved one out for a lot of drives. Neither is the statement in the kitchen
- ‘I think we’ll have to stop meeting like this’ - unexpected in this kind
of narrative. Using a cliched jokey formulation is one way of broaching
delicate questions about a relationship. People are often in situations where
they raise topics obliquely to test the water before giving their whole
hearted linguistic commitment to something. And in this version the abusive
letters make sense, because later in the account we find the letters only
started after the grandmother had forbidden her daughter to see the man.
